CHAPTER XVII

Fig. 24.—Reproduction of drawings from a rock shelter near Lerida, in Catalonia, representing a group of women clothed in jacket and skirt with "wasp-like" waists. The original figures are ten inches high, and the drawing probably dates from the late Palæolithic period.

Fig. 25.—A further portion of the same group as that shown in Fig. 24. In front is a small deer-like animal.

Some three years ago Sir Arthur Evans discovered in the palace of the ancient Kings of Crete coloured frescoes some 3,500 years old representing in great detail elegant young women with greatly compressed waists, strongly-pronounced bustles, and elaborately ornamented skirts. These Cretan paintings of prehistoric young women, both in costume and pose, are like nothing so much as the portraits of distinguished ladies of the fashionable worldof Paris exhibited by the painter, Boldini, in the "Salon." It is remarkable that explorers should have found contemporary paintings of young ladies who lived nearly as long before Cleopatra as she lived before us. And it is still more remarkable that those young ladies were "got up" in the same style, and apparently aimed at much the same effects of line and movement, as those which have become the latest fashion in Paris, and may be described as sinuous and serpentine. Not only is that the case, but it is evident that the painter of Knossos, the Minotaur city, and M. Boldini have experienced the same artistic impression, and have presented in their pictures the same significance of pose and the same form, from the tip of the nose to the ends of the fingers and the points of the toes—thus revealing a sympathy reaching across many ages. It seems to me that the same artistic impressionis to be detected in the still earlier paintings of the wasp-waisted little ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. We find here the same sinuous figure with exaggeratedly compressed waist, prominent bosom, and emphasised haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousands years earlier! One is led to wonder whether this type of human female—to-day expressed with such masterly skill by Boldini—may not be at the back of the mind of a portion of the human race—that which populated what are now the shores of the Mediterranean, and probably came there travelling northwards from the centre of Africa. Possibly they brought with them that tendency to, and admiration for, megalopygy which is evidenced by the makers of the earliest known palæolithic cave sculptures (the Aurignacians), and has persisted in some degree ever since in Europe—a tendency and a taste which are on the one hand totally absent in the East and Far East (Japan), and on the other hand have a strong development in the modern Bushmen (and the related Hottentots), an African race, and like the Spanish cave-men, rock painters.

Plate VIII.—Votary or priestess of the goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The original is a statuette in faïence, ten inches high, and was discovered by Sir Arthur Evans in the palace at Knossos in Crete. It dates from 1600b.c.

I am able to reproduce here (Plates VIII and IX), through the kindness of Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, two very interesting drawings—showing certain features in the dress of women in the prehistoric race which inhabited the island of Crete for some three thousand years previous to the date of these representations, which is about 1600b.c.They are interesting to compare both with the much more ancient figures from the Spanish cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate VIII) is a figure in coloured pottery (faïence), representing either a votary or priestess of a goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the waist and emphasises the broad hips. The little statue is about ten inches high, and was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, the ancient buried city the capital of Crete, in the Later Palace. Its date is thatof the close of the Minoan period, namely 1600b.c.The two figures in Plate IX are copied from frescoes representing acrobatic women from the bull-ring, also from the Later Palace at Knossos, and are a couple of centuries later in date. Religious ceremonies in connection with the worship of the bull (whence the fable of theminotaur) were practised in Knossos, and possibly there was a kind of baiting of bulls and jumping over and away from the infuriated animals such as may be seen at this day in the South of France and in Portugal. Possibly the employment of girls in this sport gave rise to the story of the maiden tribute from Athens to be sacrificed to the Cretan minotaur. The drawings are remarkable for the pose—that of the left-hand resembling an attitude assumed in boxing, whilst the dress—a kind of maillot or "tights"—is gripped round the waist by a firm ring (like a table-napkin ring), the compression of which is no doubt exaggerated. This fresco and many others of extraordinary interest, as well as much beautiful pottery and the whole of the plan of the city, its public buildings, granaries, library and sewers at several successive ages (the remains lying in layers one over the other), were discovered and described by Sir Arthur Evans, who is still at work on the wonderful history and art of these prehistoric Cretans, from whom the Mycenæans of the mainland of Greece were an offshoot.

The point to which I chiefly desire to call attention is that this Cretan people practised compression of the waist, and so have a certain point of agreement with the prehistoric race of Lerida represented in Figs. 24 and 25 and with Boldini's modern ladies. We know from carvings and pottery that the men as well as the women of the Mycenæan people wore a tightly-compressing girdle. The form of figure thus produced—viz. relatively small, flexible waist, and large hips with protruding buttocks—seems to be a less pronounced variety of that of the small ivory figures of Aurignacian age (late Palæolithic) found in cave deposits of France and of that of the Bushmen women. It seems as though the "ideal" female figure or that admired and pictured by these races and by the modern Latin races is the same in itsmain features, and differs altogether from that admired in the Far East. Such deeply seated tastes may possibly (indeed, not improbably) be due to a common origin of the Mediterranean and African peoples distinct from that of the Mongoloid Asiatic races.

Plate IX.—Fresco drawing of two female acrobats from the palace of Knossos, date about 1400b.c.The originals were discovered by Sir Arthur Evans.]

[9]A brief account of the skulls and implements of primitive man, with illustrations, is given in the first series of "Science from an Easy Chair," published in 1910 by Methuen & Co.

NEW YEAR'S DAY AND THE CALENDAR

I came across a discussion the other day as to whether it is right to tell children and to let them believe that Santa Claus puts Christmas presents in their stockings, and that Peter Pan really comes in at the window and teaches nice little boys and girls to float through the air. I was surprised that anyone should be so singularly ignorant of child-nature as to hold that children really believe these things. Children have a wonderful and special faculty of "make-believe," which is not the same as "belief." All the time when a child is indulging in "make-believe" (a sort of willing self-illusion or waking dream) its real, though tender, reasoning-power is merely "suspended," and is not offended or outraged. That power can on emergency be brought to the front, and the little one will say, "Of course, they're not real," or "I always knew he didn't really come down the chimney." So that I do not think anyone need be anxious as to doing harm or laying the foundations of future distrust by telling fairy-tales to the very young. If told in the right form and spirit they are received by six-year-old and older children readily and naturally as belonging to that delicious world of "make-believe" which (as one of their own orators, I believe, has said) "children of even the meanest intelligence will not be guilty of confounding with that very inferior every-day world of reality in which we find, much to our regret, that it is necessary to spend so large a part of our time." The power of make-believe is almost limitless, and makes its appearance even in the speechless infant of less than two years old, who will gather fruit from a coloured picture, generously offer you a bite, and pretend to swallow the rest itself. Make-believe must have been a very big factorin the life of the ape-like predecessors of prehistoric man.

Deception in the world of reality is very different from make-believe, and a terrible thing. To the child—deception in regard to real things, whatever excuses adults may put forward in its defence, is well-nigh unforgivable. To be one who never says "it is" when it is not, nor "it will be" when it will not be—that is to be a friend on whom a child rests in perfect trust and happiness.

What have these thoughts to do with the New Year? Merely this, that it is not only with and for children that we make-believe at this season—we all of us, more or less, indulge in a make-believe about the New Year. As the clock strikes its twelve notes at midnight on December 31st, and all the bells of a great city are heard hovering in the air, sending forth their sweet sounds from far and near into the fateful night, there are few of us who have not a feeling that a great event has occurred. A physical change has set in—the Old Year is dead and gone, and the New Year, something tangible, which you can let in at the door or the window—has just come into being, and is there waiting for us. We are, of course, indulging in "make-believe," for there is no New Year, with any natural, noteworthy thing to mark its commencement, starting at midnight on December 31st. New Years begin every day and hour, and it is by no means agreed upon by all nations of the earth to pretend that the 1st of January is the critical day which we must regard as that portentous epoch, the beginning of the New Year. This choice of a day was made by the Romans, and that wonderful man Julius Cæsar had a great deal to do with it; modern Europe adopted his arrangement of the year or calendar. But the Jews have their own calendar and their own New Year's Day, which varies from year to year, from our September 5th to our October 7th. It is, however, to them always the first day of the month Tishri, and the first day of their new year. The Mahomedans took the date of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina—the night of July 15th, 622a.d.—as the commencement of their "era,"and its anniversary is the first day of their month Muharram and the first day of their year—their New Year's Day. As, although they reckon twelve months to the year, their months are true lunar months, and are not corrected as are those in use by us (as I will explain below); their year consists of 354 days 8 hours, and so does not run parallel to our year at all. Their New Year's day, which began by being our July 16th, was in the next year coincident with our July 6th, then in three successive years it occurred on different days of June, and so on through May, April, and the preceding months, so that in thirty-two and a half of our years their New Year's Day has run through all our months and comes back again to July.

So much for New Year's Days; they are arbitrary selections, and though the Roman New Year's Day, or January 1st, has been precisely defined and fixed by the determination by astronomers of the position of the earth on that day in its revolution around the sun, yet the original selection of January 1st for the beginning of the year seems to have been merely the result of previous errors and negligence in attempting to fix the winter solstice (which now comes out as December 22nd). This is the day when the sun is lowest and the day shortest; after it has passed the sun appears gradually to acquire a new power, and increases the duration of his stay above the horizon until the longest day is reached—the summer solstice (June 21st). Julius Cæsar took January 1st for New Year's Day as being the first day of a month nearest to the winter solstice. The ancient Greeks regarded the beginning of September as "New Year."

Were mankind content with the measure of time by the completion of a cycle of revolution of the earth around the sun—that is the year—and by the revolution of the earth on its own axis—that is the day or day-night ([Greek: nychthêmeron]) of the Greeks—the notation of time and of seasons would be comparatively simple. No one seems to know why or when the day was first divided into twenty-four hours, nor why sixty minutes were taken in the hour and sixty seconds in the minute. Theancient astronomers of Egypt and China, and their beliefs in mystical numbers, have to do with the first choosing of these intervals in unrecorded ages of antiquity (as much as 2000 or 3000b.c.). The seven days of the week correspond to the five planets known to the ancients, with the addition of the sun and the moon. But the Greeks made three weeks of ten days each in a month. The true year—the exact period of a complete revolution of the earth around the sun—is 365 days 5 hours 18 minutes and 46 seconds. It was measured with a fair amount of accuracy by very ancient races of men, who fixed the position of the rising sun at the longest day by erecting big stones, one close at hand and one at a distance, so as to give a line pointing exactly to the rising spot of the sun on the horizon, as at Stonehenge. They recorded the number of days which elapsed before the longest day again appeared, and they marked also the division of that period by the two events of equally long sunlight and darkness—the spring and the autumn "equinox." It is obvious that if they took 365 days roughly as the period of revolution they would (owing to the odd hours and minutes left out) get about a day wrong in four years, and it was the business of the priests—even in ancient Rome the pontiffs were charged with this duty—to make the correction add the missing day, and proclaim the chief days of the year—the shortest day, the longest day, and the equinox-days of equal halves of sunshine and darkness. In ancient China, if the State astronomer made a wrong calculation in predicting an eclipse he was decapitated.

It is easy to understand how it became desirable to recognise more convenient divisions of the year than the four quarters marked by the solstices and the equinoxes. Various astronomical events were studied, and their regular recurrence ascertained, and they were used for this purpose. But the most obvious natural timekeeper to make use of, besides the sun, was the moon. The moon completes its cycle of change on the average in 29-1/2 days. It was used by every man to mark the passage of the year, and its periods from new moon tonew moon were called, as in our language, "months" or "moons," and divided into quarters. It is, however, an awkward fact that twelve lunar months give 354 days, so that there are eleven days left over when the solar year is divided into lunar months. The attempt to invent and cause the adoption of a system which shall regularly mark out the year into the popular and universally recognised "moons," and yet shall not make the year itself, so built up, of a length which does not agree with the true year recorded by the return of the rising sun to exactly the same spot on the horizon after 365 days and a few hours, has been throughout all the history of civilised man, and even among prehistoric peoples, a matter of difficulty. It has led to the most varied and ingenious systems, entrusted to the most learned priests and state officers, and mostly so complicated as to break down in the working, until we come to the great clear-headed man Julius Cæsar.

In the very earliest times of the city of Rome the solar year, or complete cycle of the seasons, was divided into ten lunar months covering 304 days, and it is not known how the remaining days necessary to complete the solar revolution were dealt with, or disposed of. The year was considered to commence with March, probably with the intention of getting New Year's Day near to the spring equinox. The Celtic people and the Druids, with their mistletoe rites, kept New Year also at that time. The ten Roman months were named Martius, Aprilus, Maius, Junius, Quintillis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December. In the reign of the King Numa two months were added to the year—namely, Januarius at the beginning and Februarius at the end. In 452b.c.February was removed from the end and given second place. The Romans thus arranged twelve months into the year, as the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks had long before done. The months were made by law to consist alternately of twenty-nine and of thirty days (thus keeping near to the average length of a true lunar cycle), and an odd day was thrown in for luck, making the year to consist of 355 days. This, of course, differs from the solar year by ten days and a bit. To makethe solar year and the civil or calendar year coincide as nearly as might be, Numa ordered that a special or "intercalary" month should be inserted every second year between February 23rd and 24th. It was called "Mercedonius," and consisted of twenty-two and of twenty-three days alternately, so that four years contained 1465 days, giving a mean of 366-1/4 days to each year. But this gave nearly a day too much in each year of the calendar (as the legal or civil year is called) as compared with the true solar year, agreement with which was the object in view. So another law was made to reduce the excess of days in every twenty-four years. Obviously the superintendence of these variations, and the public declaration of the calendar for each year, was a very serious and important task, affecting all kinds of legal contracts. The pontiffs to whom the duty was assigned abused their power for political ends, and so little care had they taken to regulate the civil year and keep it in coincidence with the solar year that in the time of Julius Cæsar the civil equinox differed from the astronomical by three months, the real spring equinox occurring, not at the end of what was called March by the calendar, but in June!

Julius Cæsar took the matter in hand and put things into better order. He abolished all attempt to record by the calendar a lunar year of twelve lunar months; he fixed the length of the civil year to agree as near as might be with that of the solar year, and arbitrarily altered the months; in fact, abandoned the "lunar month" and instituted the "calendar month." Thus he decreed that the ordinary year should be 365 days, but that every fourth year (which, for some perverse reason, we call "leap" year) should have an extra day. He ordered that the alternate months, from January to November inclusive, should have thirty-one days and the others thirty days, excepting February, which was to have in common years twenty-nine, but in every fourth year (our leap year) thirty. This perfectly reasonable, though arbitrary, definition of the months was accompanied by the alteration of the name of the month Quintilis to Julius, in honour of the great man. Later Augustushad the name of the month Sextilis altered to Augustus for his own glorification, and in order to gratify his vanity a law was passed taking away a day from February and putting it on to August, so that August might have thirty-one days as well as July, and not the inferior total of thirty previously assigned to it! At the same time, so that three months of thirty-one days might not come together, September and November were reduced to thirty days, and thirty-one given to October and December. In order to get everything into order and start fair Julius Cæsar restored the spring equinox to March 25th (Numa's date for it, but really four days late). For this purpose he ordered two extraordinary months, as well as Numa's intercalary month Mercedonius, to be inserted in the year 47b.c., giving that year in all 445 days. It was called "the last year of confusion." January 1st, forty-six years before the birth of Christ and the 708th since the foundation of the city, was the first day of "the first Julian year."

Although Julius Cæsar's correction and his provisions for keeping the "civil" year coincident with the astronomical year were admirable, yet they were not perfect. His astronomer, by name Sosigenes, did his best, but assumed the astronomical year to be 11 min. 14 sec. longer than it really is. In 400 years this amounts to an error of three days. The increasing disagreement of the "civil" and the "real" equinox was noticed by learned men in successive centuries. At last, ina.d.1582, it was found that the real astronomical equinox, which was supposed to occur on March 25th, when Julius Cæsar introduced his calendar (not on March 21st, as was later discovered to be the fact), had retrograded towards the beginning of the civil year, so that it coincided with March 11th of the calendar. In order to restore the equinox to its proper place (March 21st), Pope Gregory XIII directed ten days to be suppressed in the calendar—of that year—and to prevent things going wrong again it was enacted that leap-year day shall not be reckoned in those centenary years which are not multiples of 400. Thus Pope Gregory got rid of three days out of the Julian calendar, or civil year, inevery 400 years, since 1600 was retained as a leap-year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900, though according to the former law leap-years, were made common years, whilst 2000 will be a leap-year. In order to correct a further minute error, namely, the fact that the calendar year as now amended is 26 sec. longer than the true solar year, it is proposed that the year 4000 and all its multiples shall be common years, and not leap years. This is a matter which, though practical, is of distinctly remote importance. Some people like to look well ahead.

The alteration in the calendar made by Pope Gregory was successfully opposed for a long time in Great Britain by popular prejudice. It was called "new style," and was at last accepted, as in other European countries, but has never been adopted in Russia, which retains the "old style." An Act of Parliament was passed in 1751 ordering that the day following September 2nd, 1752, should be accounted the fourteenth of that month. Many people thought that they had been cheated out of eleven days of life, and there were serious riots! The change had been already made in Scotland in the year 1600 without much outcry. The Scotch were either too "canny" or too dull to "fash" themselves about it.

Let us now revert for a moment to the proceedings of Oriental potentates in regard to astronomers, a class of scientific functionaries whom they have from remote ages been in the habit of employing. It appears that in China there is no attempt to make the civil year or year of the calendar coincide with the astronomical year. The astronomical year is reckoned as beginning when the sun enters Capricorn, our winter solstice, and is thus more reasonably defined than is the commencement of our New Year, which is nine days late. Twelve months are recognised; the first is called Tzu, the second Chou, and the third Yin, and the rest respectively Mao, Chen, Su, Wu, Wei, Shen, Yu, Hsu, Hai. But the calendar year, on the other hand, begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, "Make it so," and it is so. With great ceremony he issues a calendar ten months in advance, fixing as he pleases all the important festive andlucky days of the year. Various emperors have made New Year's Day in the fourth, third, second, first, or twelfth month. It has now been fixed for many centuries in the second astronomical month. I have mentioned above that the ancient Greeks reckoned the New Year as beginning about the end of September. But the reckoning differed in the different States, and so did the names of the months. Although the Greek astronomers determined the real solar year with remarkable accuracy, and proposed very clever modes of correcting the calendar so as to use the lunar months in reckoning, there was no general system adopted, no agreement among the "home-ruling" States.

I have stated above that the official Chinese astronomers sometimes get their heads cut off for not correctly foretelling an eclipse. Illustrating this there is the following story of a visit paid about forty years ago to the Observatory in Greenwich Park by the Shah of Persia of that date. The Persians have many close links with the Chinese, and share their view of astronomy as a sort of State function, in which the Emperor has special authority. The Shah accordingly made a great point of visiting the British State observatory, in company with King Edward, who was then Prince of Wales. Sir George Airy was the Astronomer Royal, and showed the party over the building and gave them peeps through telescopes. "Now show me an eclipse of the sun," said the Shah, speaking in French. Sir George pretended not to hear, and led the way to another instrument. "Dog of an astronomer," said the Shah, "produce me an eclipse!" Sir George politely said he had not got one and could not oblige the King of Kings. "Ho, ho!" said the Shah, turning in great indignation to the Prince of Wales. "You hear! cut his head off!" Sir George's life was, as a matter of fact, spared, but in the course of a year he retired, and was succeeded by another Astronomer Royal. On his appointment that gentleman was astonished at receiving a letter of congratulation from the Shah of Persia. The Shah evidently thought that his bloodthirsty request had been attended to, though with some delay. He proceeded to tell the new AstronomerRoyal that he had a few days before writing witnessed a total eclipse of the sun in the observatory at Teheran. This was perfectly correct. The suggestion was that the Teheran astronomers knew their business, and had the good sense to arrange an eclipse when a Royal Visitor wished for one, and so escape decapitation—a course which the kindly Shah evidently wished to indicate to the new and young Astronomer Royal as that which he should pursue in order to avoid the fate of his unhappy and obstinate predecessor. The attitude of the Shah towards science is one which is not altogether unknown in this country.

EASTERTIDE, SHAMROCKS AND SPERMACETI

Most people think of Easter as a Christian festival, but it is really in name and origin a pagan one. The word "Easter" is the modern form of "Eastra," the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring (in primitive Germanic, "Austro"). The Germans, like ourselves, keep its true pagan name, "Ostern." The Latin nations use for Easter the word Pascha (French, Pâque), the Greek form of the Jewish name for the feast of the Passover, with which it is historically associated by the Christian Church. Terrible quarrels have occurred in early ages over fixing Easter Day and its exact relation to the Jewish calendar. This is the explanation of its being "a movable feast" and of the consequent inconvenience to Parliament, schoolboys, and Bank-holiday-makers at the present day. It must be admitted that when Easter comes as early as it sometimes does those who have but the short spring holiday of the Easter week-end are hardly used. Instead of enjoying the sunny spring weather of Austro, and the flowers and the bursting buds which an Easter at the end of April often gives, they have to put up with the dreary chill of arid March, and this, absurdly enough, is all on account of a mistaken attempt at accuracy made by the Church some sixteen hundred or more years ago in trying to bring the Christian festival into line with the Jewish Passover. If it were desired to celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection each year on the day corresponding astronomically with that indicated in the Gospels, the Astronomer Royal would have no difficulty in exactly fixing the day, making due allowance for the changes of the calendar and for the irregularities of the Jewish year. I do not know what day in what monthsuch a calculation would finally establish as that of the ecclesiastical festival, but the Bank Holiday and the Anglo-Saxon Easter might be dealt with separately, and assigned, once for all, to the end of April, the real "opening," or spring month.

The yellow "tansy cakes" which used to be, and the coloured eggs which still are, given away at Easter throughout Europe, are not of Christian origin, but belong to the Roman celebration (at the same season, viz., April 12th to 15th) of the goddess of Plenty—Ceres. Eggs are the symbols of fecundity and the renewal of life in the spring. They were decorated and given in baskets by rich Romans to their friends and dependents at this season. "Hot-cross buns" are peculiar to England, and no doubt have a Christian significance. They have not survived in Scotland, although Easter eggs are well known there (sometimes they are called "pace-eggs"), nor on the Continent, where "Pascal eggs" are an institution. "Buns" owe their name to the old Norse word "bunga," a convexity or round lump, preserved also in our words "bunion" and "bung." In Norman French it became "bonne," and in the fourteenth century was applied to the round loaf of bread given to a horse; the loaf was called Bayard's bonne (pronounced "bun"). In some parts of England a "bunny" still means a swelling due to a blow.

The April fish, the "poisson d'Avril," is the polite French term for what we call an "April fool." But why a fish is introduced in this connection I am unable to say. The custom of sending people on fool's errands on the First of April is probably due to the change of the calendar in France in 1564; but there is a Hindoo feast on March 31st, when similar jokes are perpetrated. It is called "Huli," which, in accordance with phonetic laws, readily becomes "Fooli." This is probably only a coincidence.

A curious Easter custom in country districts in England used to be (perhaps still is) that called "lifting" or "heaving." On Easter Monday two men will join hands so as to form a seat; their companions then"by right of custom" compel the women they may meet to sit, one after the other, on the improvised throne and be lifted or heaved as high as may be. On Easter Tuesday the women perform the same rite upon the men. Strangers thus assailed have been much disconcerted and have recorded their astonishment in "notes of travel." The custom is said to be a popular degeneration of the celebration of the Resurrection.

An early Easter falls little in advance of St. Patrick's Day, when there is much "wearing of the green" and questioning as to what plant is "the real shamrock." This matter has become so involved and developed by wild enthusiasm, ignorance, and false sentiment that it is difficult to deal with it. A distinguished Irishman once showed me the "shamrock" he was wearing in his buttonhole as "the true" plant of that name. He assured me that he had studied the subject from boyhood and knew well the true and the false. "What is its flower like?" I asked him. "It never has a flower at all," he said. Another injustice to Ireland, one must suppose, or a miracle of St. Patrick's! His "green" was a bit of the small variety of the common clover,Trifolium repens, which, of course, produces the usual tuft of florets or clover-head. It is true that this plant has now been vulgarly substituted for St. Patrick's shamrock. The shamrock is not really the common clover nor any variety of it. The common Dutch clover and its varieties were introduced into Ireland two hundred years ago from England and are not Irish at all! The true shamrock is the delicate little wood-sorrel,Oxalis acetosella, which has a beautifully formed three-split or trefoil leaf of the most vivid green colour, and a white flower like that of a geranium. It is called "fairy-bell" by the Welsh, and was believed to ring chimes for the elfin folk. It was also greatly esteemed for its acid flavour and for various reputed medicinal and magical properties by the Druids and among the early inhabitants of GreatBritain and Ireland. Pliny says it never shelters a snake, and is an antidote to the poison of serpents and scorpions—a good reason for its association with St. Patrick! It had already a reputation and sanctity when, if tradition be true, St. Patrick used its threefold leaf to symbolise the doctrine of the Trinity.

It is much rarer to find the wood-sorrel trefoil with a fourth leaflet than it is to find the clover trefoil so provided. The two plants belong to families widely separated from one another. The ancient architectural decoration of trefoil carving, and also the heraldic shamrock in the arms of the United Kingdom, represent the leaf of the wood-sorrel, and not that of the clover. No doubt there has been some sentimental intention in putting forward the humble, abundant, down-trodden dwarf-clover, the very sod itself of Ireland (really introduced from England) as "the shamrock!" But, as often happens in such cases, truth and the ancient and honourable tradition of a beautiful thing have been wantonly disregarded in order to do business in cheap sentiment. Traders are always ready to take advantage of an ignorant public. Common sprats are called "sardines," the name of another and rarer fish, in order to conceal the fact that they are sprats; clarified horse fat is called "fresh country butter," and Irish regiments are made to decorate themselves with common clover under the delusion that it is the shamrock. Other plants have been from time to time utilised to usurp the title of "shamrock." Thus the small Lucerne clover or medicago is often sold as "shamrock" to Irish patriots, and the watercress has been solemnly pat forward as the true shamrock simply because old writers tell us, as evidence of the barbarous state of the Irish, that they fed upon shamrocks and watercress. The true shamrock (the wood-sorrel) was formerly greatly valued all over Europe as a salad and a flavouring herb on account of its leaves containing oxalic acid. It was used for the manufacture of oxalic acid, which was sold as "salts of lemons" for removing iron-mould. It was the basis of the soup and of the green sauce for fish, in which the dock-sorrel(Rumex) has now taken its place. The name "shamrock" is an old Irish word, written "seamragg," and means a little "trefoil." Curiously enough there appears to be an Oriental word, "shamrakh," which I am told is of Arabic origin, and also means a trefoil. In English writers from the seventeenth century onwards the Irish shamrock is variously written of as "shamroots," "shamerags" (this and the next following with hostile intent), "shame-rogues," "sham-brogues," and "sham-rug."

I am sorry to say that Shakespeare does not mention the shamrock at all. No Irishman who knows the little oxalis or wood-sorrel could wish for a more beautiful floral emblem of the Emerald Isle, or dream of letting the vulgar Saxon intruder—the dwarf clover—take its place. Perhaps it is the Ulstermen who have set up the foreign "Dutch" clover to replace the true shamrock, the wood-sorrel. These changes are easily made. For instance, "green" is not the original colour of Ireland, but light blue—Cambridge blue!

This chapter is one of varied material, and I now pass abruptly from fresh emerald leaflets to the waxy crystals stewed out of the fat of a monster's head. There has seldom been a controversy so entertaining as that between Dr. Bode (the talented director of the Art Gallery of Berlin) and his opponents, in regard to the age of the wax-bust which he purchased not long ago for £8,000 in Bond Street in the belief that it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Science has had its share in the examination of the bust. The last scientific contribution to the matter was the discovery by an analytical chemist, Dr. Pinkus, that the waxy mixture of which the bust is composed consists in definite proportion of spermaceti. Now since spermaceti was not used before the year 1700, the bust cannot (say Dr. Bode's opponents) have been made by Leonardo da Vinci, who died in the early part of the sixteenth century. "Nonsense!" reply Dr. Bode's supporters, "Shakespeare makes Hotspur speak of 'parmaceti,'and it was well known to the doctors of Salerno in 1100a.d., and probably used by the ancients."

Nevertheless, the opponents of Dr. Bode are right. I am sorry, because Dr. Bode is, in regard to "works of art," a most able expert, and I think it is better that experts should always be right. Spermaceti was known, probably from classical times onwards, as a rare and precious unguent, "resolutive and mollifying," as M. Pomel, "chief druggist to the late French King Louis XIV," says in his treatise on drugs, translated into English in 1737. It was applied as a liniment for hardness of the skin and breasts, and was also taken internally. Shakespeare's reference to it is "parmaceti for an inward bruise." The fact is it was known and used in small quantity before 1700a.d.in connection with medicine and the toilet, but was not consumed by the thousand tons a year, as it was after the hunting of the sperm whale or cachalot (Physeter mecrocephalus) had been set a-going by the brave fishermen of Nantucket and the Northern Atlantic coast of America in 1690. In 1730 or thereabouts the English and the Dutch also sent out ships to take part in this perilous industry, which is now again, in its dwindled condition, exclusively American. It is the pursuit of by far the biggest and fiercest animal which man has doomed to extinction. Those who enjoy such stories of adventure should read Mr. Bullen's personal narrative, "The Cruise of the Cachalot." It was at the end of the eighteenth century that spermaceti became so abundant in the market that candles of it were manufactured and sold cheaper than those of wax. From about 1860 it was superseded by paraffin and other wax-like products: and it was at its cheapest period, and when it was most widely in use, that Lucas, the English artist, who made many wax busts and statuettes, is known to have mixed it, in the form of "old candles," with beeswax, in order to form the composition which he used in his works. The evidence given by the chemist, Dr. Pinkus, appears to me to be conclusive (even without the evidence of the old clothes stuffed into the hollow of the bust) against the theorythat the Bode wax-bust of Flora is more ancient than the nineteenth century, and much in favour of its being the work of Lucas, who is exceptionally known as a wax-modeller of repute sixty years ago, who did use spermaceti.

Spermaceti is a perfectly definite chemical body, which can be recognised without chance of error. It is a combination of palmitic acid and a peculiar hydrocarbon, called (after the whale) "cetyl," and easily forms pure crystals. Before sperm whales were hunted it was obtained in relatively small quantity from individual sperm whales, which by misadventure landed themselves on the coast of France, Spain, or Great Britain, and was eagerly purchased by the apothecaries and perfumers of the great cities of Europe. There are several records of such strange mistakes on the part of the great sperm whale. Only ten or fifteen years ago one was stranded on the Lincolnshire coast, whilst the specimen exhibited in the Natural History Museum was washed ashore at Thurso in Caithness. The spermaceti is found dissolved in the more ordinary oil (or fat), which occupies a huge region above the bones of the upper jaw and gives the sperm whale its barrel-shaped head. It separates on cooling, from the liquid oil, in crystalline flakes, forming great masses, which are purified by re-melting and cooling. In early times the fine waxy, flaky material thus obtained was known in samples of a few ounces, and sold by apothecaries. It was known that it came from a whale, and was believed to be the seed or sperm of that animal, hence its name "spermaceti." M. Pomel, whom I cited above, believed it to come from the brain of the whale called "cachalot." No one would have dreamt in the sixteenth century of mixing this precious stuff with beeswax for modelling purposes. At that date one would as soon have mixed amber with pitch. That reminds me that "grey amber" or "ambergris" is also a product of the sperm whale not to be confounded with spermaceti. It is an unhealthy intestinal concretion like bezoar-stone (see p. 64), only exceptionally produced. It is found floatingin the ocean, and is recognised as coming from the cachalot owing to its being largely made up of the horny beaks of cuttle-fish, upon which the cachalot feeds. It is still used in perfumery, and fetches the extraordinary price of four guineas the ounce. A piece weighing 4-1/2 oz. may be seen in Cromwell Road.

Though the oils (or fats) of plants and animals are very similar to one another in appearance, there are a very large number of them differing chemically from one another. Thus the fat or oil of dozens of different nuts and plant-products and of lower animals and fishes, and of sheep, oxen, pigs, dogs, elephants, and men contain different and special chemical substances, corresponding to the "cetyl" which is present in the fat of the sperm whale's head. Many of them have acquired as a result of experience and tradition special value for some special purpose. Several oils have peculiar fitness and great value for oiling delicate machinery; others are used in curing leather, for burning, and for medicinal ointments, whilst a large variety is used as human food.

MUSEUMS

The word "museum" is not one of those which explain themselves and give an indication of what the thing to which they are applied should be, when it has ceased to be what it was intended to be. In ancient Greece the word "mouseion" meant "the place of the Muses"—a grove or a temple—and there was such a place on a part of the Acropolis of Athens, the rocky temple-crowned hill around which the city was built. There were other "museums," or seats of the Muses, in ancient Greece; those on the slopes of Mount Helicon and of Mount Olympus were the most famous. In modern times a picture gallery and art collection, that of the Louvre, in Paris, is called "the Musée," whilst "the Muséum" (the Latin form of the same word) is the name distinctively applied in Paris to the collections of natural history and the laboratories connected with them in the Jardin des Plantes. In London "the British Museum," founded in 1753, originally comprised the national library as well as collections of antiquities and of natural history. In Heidelberg "the Museum" was the name, when I was there, for a delightful club, with a garden. It belonged to the professors, their families, and their friends in the town, and concerts and dances were given in it. It seems that the Heidelberg "Museum" comes nearest to the original meaning of the word as "a seat of Muses," for nearly all those mythical ladies were remarkable for their special patronage of music, dancing, and song.

Who were these goddesses, the Muses, and what were their names? What was the speciality of each, and how do they come to have to do with collections of works of art and specimens of natural history? Twolearned "classical" friends whom I lately met in Paris could not help me further than by giving me the names of the first three. I was a little shocked, but the next evening discovered that these goddesses are, in modern times, very generally neglected and ignored. In an extremely amusing play, called "Le Bois Sacré"—the Sacred Grove (of the Muses)—a name applied jocosely to the Ministry of Fine Arts—I found that the minister of that department was represented as a pompous and fatuous person who completely fails to call to mind, in the course of an eloquent speech, the name of more than one. On ringing for his secretaries and airily asking them to refresh his memory, he did not succeed in extracting from them more than two doubtful additions to his list!

I am able, nevertheless (after due investigation), to put my reader in possession of the facts so unfamiliar to the modern oracles of classical mythology! Briefly, it appears that in the best period of ancient Greece nine Muses were recognised, namely, Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; Euterpé, of lyric poetry; Erato, of erotic poetry; Melpomené, of tragedy; Thalia, of comedy; Polyhymnia, of sacred hymns; Terpsichoré, of choral song and dance; Clio, of history; and Urania, of astronomy. The last two seem to have very little in common with the addiction to singing and dancing characteristic of the rest, and are the only ones who can be imagined as feeling themselves at home in a modern museum, excepting on those evenings when the authorities use the museum (as is the custom in London) for a "conversazione," enlivened by brass bands and songs.

Apollo was said to be the leader and master of the Muses, but was not related to them. They were in origin the "nymphs" or "genii" of mountain streams worshipped by an ancient bardic race (resembling our own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of the Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three were named—one of Meditation (Meleté), one of Memory (Mnemé), and one of Song (Aöidé)—a much prettier embodiment of theimpression made on a poetical mind by rock-pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the formal and redundant nine of later times. One can associate the primitive three with a museum of natural history; but the later official goddesses, each insisting on her own department of poetry, are too clearly representative of the all-appropriating pretensions of literature in modern seats of learning. They remind me of the enumeration of studies which a dear old head of an Oxford college innocently regarded as complete and reasonable when he assured me that all branches of knowledge were fairly and equally represented on the college staff. "We have," he said, "a lecturer on Greek literature, one on Latin literature, one on Greek history, one on Roman history, one on classical philology, one on modern history, one on mathematics and one on the natural sciences." What more, he asked, could you wish for?

It appears that, without any special reference to the attributes of the Muses, the word "museum" has been adopted in recent times for a building in which collections of works of art and specimens of natural history are housed, and even for the collections themselves—in consequence of the foundation by the Ptolemaic Kings of Egypt of a splendid institution at Alexandria to which the name museum (mouseion) was given. It included the great library, apparatus for the study of astronomy, anatomy, and other sciences, and collections of all kinds. The most learned men were employed in its management and were lodged there and provided with the means of study and teaching. It was a combination of university, learned academy, and temple, and was the pride of the ancient world. It survived many changes of lordship, but at last the library and collections were deliberately destroyed by Moslem invaders in 640a.d.The precious manuscripts were served out as fuel for the public baths, and were so numerous that it took some months to consume them! The destruction of the museum of Alexandria marks the commencement of the "Dark Ages"; the ancient culture was dead. Eight centuries of submergencewith strange mysterious upfloatings were its fate until the Renascence, when its fragments were recovered, and soon did more harm than good to the fetish-worshipping peoples of Europe.

The first use of the word "museum" in this country for a place in which collections of ancient works of art and specimens of natural history were stored and arranged for exhibition was in the early eighteenth century, when it was applied to the building at Oxford, erected for Mr. Ashmole's collections, presented to the University. This was called "Ashmole's Museum," or the Ashmolean Museum. Previously such a collection and its location were spoken of as "a cabinet of rare and curious objects." "Museum" was occasionally used for what we now call a "study," and even to describe lecture-rooms and library. I have not been able to discover that the word was used in its modern sense at an earlier date on the Continent than in England. The first great typical example of a "museum" was the British Museum, founded in 1753. Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, was purchased by the State to serve as a "repository" (the word used in the Act of Parliament of that date) for the vast collections of natural history made by Sir Hans Sloane, with which were associated certain valuable libraries and collections of manuscripts, of coins, and antique marbles. A large part of the money required for the undertaking was raised by a public lottery, over which the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker presided (according to the custom of those days in regard to State lotteries), and it is thus that this remarkable group of great officials became, and have remained ever since, "the Three Principal Trustees of the British Museum." Additional trustees were named (since increased to a total of nearly fifty), and provision was made for the appointment of a principal librarian and other curators of the collections. The Act declared that the collections placed in the "repository" (Montagu House) were to remain there for the benefit and enjoyment of posterity for ever—aprovision which until seven years ago was misinterpreted, so as to prevent the sending out of unnamed and unstudied collections of small portable objects like insects, dried plants, and shells, to be named and compared with other specimens, by foreign naturalists. Consequently, there was a great accumulation of specimens unstudied and useless, and a great loss to knowledge. But the late Lord Chancellor (Halsbury) decided that it was not only legally within the power of the trustees temporarily to remove specimens from "the repository" for the purpose of having them named and studied, but actually their duty to do so.

We now very generally recognise in Great Britain, as in other parts of the civilised world, the value and importance of public "museums" in the sense of "repositories of collections of objects of ancient and modern art and of natural history." Museums, as at present existing, may be divided into four kinds, according to the nature of the public or private bodies by which they have been set up and carried on. There are, first of all, national museums maintained and continually increased by the expenditure of a great State, and placed in the capital city; secondly, provincial or local museums, supported by a municipality or by local munificence; thirdly, academic museums, which are those related to the instruction and investigations carried on in a university or a school, and forming part of its regular provision for study; and, fourthly, the museums of private individuals (which as a rule, become eventually transferred by gift or purchase to some existing public museum).

The word "museum" would, and often does, fitly include picture galleries, but very usually in Great Britain a museum is not considered as comprising a picture gallery, and a picture gallery is treated and managed as something distinct from "a museum." The distinction is recognised in London, where we have as separate institutions the British Museum and the National Gallery. Probably the distinct method of exhibiting and caring for pictures, and the very large amount of special knowledge connected with thereasonable employment of public funds in the purchase of these very high-priced objects, as well as the example of private collectors of pictures, are the causes which have led in the past to the complete separation of "picture galleries" from "museums." It is, however, a curious fact that the British Museum (which once possessed some oil paintings, now removed to other public galleries) retains and expends money on its splendid collections of water-colour pictures, drawings, and engravings, whilst in the latter half of the last century (in opposition to the custom of separating pictures from other museum objects) there grew up in London, under the State Department of Education, a vast collection of all kinds of works of art (pottery, furniture, lace, metal-work, etc.) of all countries and ages, including pictures, which is now sumptuously housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Though I propose to write here with special reference to "museums," in the more limited sense as repositories of objects which are the bases of our knowledge of the history of man and his arts, and as the storehouses of specimens which in the same way are the material by the study of which we arrive at a knowledge of the history of the earth, and of the living things which have existed, and of others which still exist on its surface—yet it is obvious that the general purposes of all collections of interesting objects (including even pictures) and their arrangement for public use and benefit must be the same, although there are special purposes in view in regard to some collections which do not exist in regard to others. Not long since Mr. Claude Phillips ably set forth some of the principles which should guide the arrangement and exhibition of objects in an art museum, and criticised the plan at present adopted in the Victoria and Albert Museum. As I hold views in regard to the arrangement of natural history museums which are very similar to his, I think it may be useful to explain here what they are.

I may point out that nearly every branch of knowledge should have—in a civilised well-provided community—itscollection of material objects, either specimens, models, or ancient examples and remains, which should be "records" to be religiously preserved for future reference and comparison by expert students, whilst others should be there to serve as demonstrations of "great" facts of nature or of human art—direct and straightforward appeals—to the ordinary intelligent (but not specially learned) man. You might well have (what does not at present exist!) a museum (in the modern sense) of astronomy, containing models of the solar system showing the relative distances and sizes of the heavenly bodies—as well as modern and ancient astronomical instruments, and the records obtained by their use. Again, you might have (and to some extent such museums exist), at the other end of the scale in dignity and age, a museum illustrating the history and present developments of the smelting of iron and other metals, their purification, their alloying, and properties—as also a museum of paper-making and one of the steam engine and its modern rivals. In such cases the purpose of the museum would be plain enough and comparatively easy to carry out.

Most museums which have come into existence within the last 200 years suffer from the fact that they are mere enlargements of the ancient collector's "cabinet of rare and curious things," brought together and arranged without rhyme or reason. No one has ever attempted to say what is precisely the aim and intention as a public enterprise of any of our great museums, and accordingly there has been no consideration, discussion, or agreement as to the methods of collection, selection, arrangement, exhibition, and storage of the objects assembled within their walls. Thousands, even millions of pounds, have been expended on the building of museums, on the purchase of specimens, on cases and cataloguing, and on the salaries of directors, and keepers, and assistants, yet the museums remain, so far as any declaration of purpose and principle is concerned, mere "repositories," as in the words of the old Act of Parliament constituting the British Museum—for the use and enjoyment ofthe public, it is true, but without any expression of a conception of how that use and enjoyment is to be limited so as to make them something better than a dime-show, or how any serious purpose is to be achieved by their costly housing and up-keep. No doubt various directors and keepers have from time to time shown intelligence and laboured to make museums not only places of enjoyment and "edification," but also the means of increasing knowledge and rendering service to the State. But the scope of our public museums, and the principles and methods by which it may be realised, have never been agreed upon, and consequently are not definitely recognised by the State nor by the curiously ill-chosen committees of managers, or trustees, to whose tender mercies the ultimate control of these institutions is confided—apparently by haphazard or misapprehension.

The notion of a town corporation, or of the central government at this or that date, has been that museums are best controlled and public money expended in connection with them by persons who know nothing about the real importance of the collections, and receive no guidance from any scheme or statutable declaration of specific purpose drawn up by a competent authority. I will endeavour to state what those purposes should be.

When one tries to estimate what is really the value to the community of public "museums," one is led inevitably to the conclusion that their most important purpose—whether they are museums of natural history, of antiquities, or of art—is to serve as safe and permanent "repositories" (the old word used in the British Museum Act of 1753) for specimens which are costly and difficult to obtain—not to be either "picked up" or readily "housed" by everybody, and at the same time of real importance as "records." The first and most commanding duty of those who set up and maintain a public museum is to preserve actual things as records—records of the existence in this or that locality of each kind of plant and animal, records of the former existence of extinctplants and animals, with irrefragable certainty as to the locality and the exact strata in which they were found—records of prehistoric man, his weapons and art, and of the animals found with them, records of modern times. Everyone is familiar with this duty of the State and of local public bodies, when it is a matter of preserving written and printed records. They are preserved in various public offices and libraries, and are continually being studied by experts (volunteers or official) and copied in print, so as to furnish us with accurate knowledge of the past.

It is the first and leading business of museums to collect and preserve, with great accuracy as to the locality and circumstances in which each was found, the actual concrete things which are the records of nature, and of the various stages of man's art and industries in every region of the world, just as a library or the Record Office preserves manuscripts and printed documents and books. Collections of such specimens are often made by private individuals, and become too cumbersome for him or his heirs to keep in order. They are then frequently given to a public museum, and I regret to say in many provincial museums are neglected and become mere rubbish, even if they were not so when first given. Often such gifts are rubbish before they are received, and should never have been accepted. But in a great many instances the local museum of a country town is nothing but a rubbish-heap, because the townspeople will not spend the money necessary to obtain the services of a capable curator and to provide cases, labels, catalogues, and attendance. The town councillors usually know nothing about the museum or the value of the objects gathered there, and do not recognise the duty of making it an orderly and carefully tended storehouse of the records of Nature and antiquity of the neighbourhood. Too frequently the town museum is made the means of gratifying the vanity of some local collector, who hands over all sorts of ill-chosen, badly preserved specimens to its ignorant guardians, and is advertised by labels on the cases and by votes of thanks, whilst valuable recordsplaced there in a previous generation are swept into a corner or broken and cast into the cellar in order to make space for the new rubbish!

Unless funds are found to place a specially educated man at the head of a local museum, the museum had better be shut, and such of its contents, as may be desired, offered to one of the big city museums or to the National Museum in London. It is no child's play, maintaining and guarding efficiently a museum which contains "records." It would be a good thing were a committee of naturalists and antiquaries to visit the local museums of the United Kingdom and report on the efficiency of their guardianship and the state of the treasures which they contain. I know two provincial museums very well in which extremely valuable records of prehistoric man and of wonderful extinct animals—found in the neighbourhood and preserved by those who established the museums fifty years ago—are utterly neglected and destroyed by loss of the labels and mixing up of the specimens, in consequence of the death of the persons originally interested in the museum and of the refusal of the town councils to find money to pay for the care of the collections. There can be little doubt that in the present state of local interest in such matters all really important record specimens should find their way to the British Museum in London, where, if accepted, their preservation, so far as it is humanly possible, is assured. That is the distinctive and most creditable feature of our great State-supported museum. At the same time it seems obvious that the records of a provincial area can be, and should be, kept in the county town museum, with a detail and completeness impossible elsewhere, and that it should be the pride of the county to be able to show to a stranger full records of the distinctive features of its natural history and antiquities.

It is clear that whatever failures in this respect may be inevitable in those hopelessly starved and mismanaged "museums" at present surviving to bear witness to the decay of public spirit and intelligentculture in our country towns, the prime duty of the great London museum is to preserve "records" with the greatest nicety and readiness for reference, whilst the duty of actively adding to these records from all parts of the Empire, and, therefore, of the world, and that of minutely studying and reporting upon the collections so obtained and guarded, follow as a matter of course. These collections are the absolutely necessary foundation for the building-up of our knowledge of Nature and of man. We can never say that this branch of scientific knowledge is valuable and that another is a mere fanciful pursuit. Every year it becomes more and more clear that unexpectedly some apparently insignificant piece of detailed scientific knowledge may become of value to the State and to humanity at large. Everyone knows that geology has a great practical value in mining, water supply, and various kinds of engineering, also that botany, as represented by the great State institution at Kew, is of immense value to those who introduce useful plants from one part of the world for cultivation in another. But of late we have seen that entomology—"bug-hunting" as it is scornfully termed—is a science upon which hang not only the revenue of an Empire, but also the lives of millions of men. Destructive insects must be known with the utmost accuracy in order to stop their injury to crops in the distant lands which they inhabit, and also in order to check the diseases carried by them which sweep off vast herds of costly cattle. The mosquitoes and the tsetze flies have been, only recently, proved to be the causes, the carriers, of diseases—malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness—which annually have killed hundreds of thousands of men, colonists as well as natives. I was able to bring together at the Natural History Museum collections of mosquitoes from every part of the world, amounting to thousands of specimens and to some hundreds of kinds. The study of these and of the tsetze flies by skilled entomologists employed in the museum has been a necessary part of the steps now being taken everywhere to preserve human population from theattacks of certain deadly kinds among them, distinguished from the others which are harmless.

Thus, then, it seems that the first and most important purpose for which great "museums" exist is that of "the making of new knowledge"—the increase of science—by furnishing carefully gathered and preserved "specimens" of all kinds, and by working out the history and significance of those collections. But there is a second and distinct purpose which is often ignorantly put in the first place. It is of less importance and quite unlike the first in the methods necessary for its attainment, and yet is conveniently and satisfactorily carried out in conjunction with the first. This second and distinct purpose is the exhibition of such portions of the collections in a museum as are suitable for exhibition (only a smaller portion are so) in public galleries, so chosen, arranged, lighted and labelled as to afford to the public at large the maximum of enjoyment and edification. This is, as it were, a readily accessible enjoyment given to the public in recognition of the large sums of public money expended on the severer and less easily appreciated enterprise of the museum. The public galleries of a museum, whether of natural history, antiquities or art, should not contain the bulk of the collection, but only special things, carefully selected, and equally carefully placed in case or on wall, with artistic judgment as to space-bordering and colour of background, and with scientific perfection of illumination, so as to produce the "just" impression on the leisurely visitor. The public "exhibit" should be arranged so as to draw attention to a series of important facts of structure or quality clearly shown by the specimens, whether they are natural products or works of art, and these facts should be described in printed labels fully, and the reason for attaching importance to them explained at sufficient length. The man who arranges the public galleries (as distinct from the closed study-rooms) of a public museum, should have a special gift of exposition in plain language, and be able toseparate (both in regard to his words and to the specimens he selects) the essential from the non-essential, the significant from the redundant.

It is important to make a complete distinction between an exhibition intended for the general public and that intended for advanced students in schools, colleges and universities. The confusion of these two kinds of exhibition is the cause of the failure of many museums and of the dislike with which most people regard a visit to them. The public museum—metropolitan or local—should not include in its purpose the "academic" instruction of schoolboys and university students. That requires a different kind of museum, which is (or should be) provided by the school or university, though, of course, the students should also visit the more popular museums. The funds and staff and space required for the one are not sufficient for both. If both are attempted, the unpopular academic, or scholars', exhibition will get the upper hand and suppress the other, since it is a far easier thing to carry out successfully (for the class aimed at) than is the carefully planned exhibition intended for the "edification" of the greater public. The university museum aims at imparting a much greater amount of detailed and elaborate information than does the great public museum, and requires from the student who uses it a special previous study of the subject, and an exceptional amount of attention and pains in examining the objects exhibited.

Too many of the public museums of Europe aim at the "instruction" of the special student rather than at the "edification" of the general public, whilst most aim at nothing at all except showing, without explanation or comment, a vast mass of specimens or pictures, at the sight of which the patient but bored public gapes with wonder. The public galleries of the Natural History Museum in London have been arranged more distinctly with a view to the edification of the public than those of any other museum which I know. But they still contain too large a number of specimens, and still require an immense amountof work in weeding, selection and labelling, and in deliberately making the specimens exhibited tell a tale which is worth remembering, and can be remembered. Except in the case of the larger specimens, and especially those of fossilized skeletons and shells of extinct animals, it must be remembered that the bulk of the specimens (and, indeed, all the valuable skins of animals and birds, and the vast series of insects and such small things) in that, as in every other large museum, are contained in cabinets protected from the destructive action of light, and arranged for the most part in rooms to which access is obtained only by serious workers after special application. The fishes and other animals preserved in alcohol are kept in a special fire-proof "spirit-building."

A provincial public museum, even if it does not aim at the guardianship of important local "records" of natural history and antiquity, should aim at the edification of the public—the grown-up public—and not at the instruction of school children. The notion that museums are meant for children, which exists, I am sorry to say, even in regard to so splendid and expensive a display of wonderful things as that to be seen at the Natural History Museum, is due to the bad tradition justified by the condition of other museums, where a child may enjoy being astonished, but a grown-up person can take in nothing which appeals to the intelligence. A new city museum is, it is reported, to be established at Birmingham. We may hope that it will not contain the usual unsatisfactory series of badly stuffed exotic animals, birds, and reptiles, and trophies of South Sea islanders' clubs and spears. It should contain first-rate specimens of the living and extinct fauna of Warwickshire, and specimens of foreign animals carefully selected to compare with them and throw light on them; also local prehistoric and antiquarian specimens, illustrated by comparison with the work of savage and remote races. The excellent suggestion has been made that it should contain specimens of the insect-pests of Warwickshire crops. It should also exhibit the mineralsfrom which manufactories of Birmingham draw their metals, and should show the stages of their preparation. It should appeal, not to the boys and girls of Birmingham in the first place, but to the adults, and to do this it should be placed under the care of a really first-rate and ingenious man, who might possibly do for the Birmingham Museum what skilful arrangement and sound knowledge have done for its Art Gallery—an institution intended to appeal not to school children, but to the reasonable adult population of the city.

The principle of exhibiting permanently in public galleries a portion of our great national collections and of preserving another and larger portion in smaller rooms, where they can be more closely but not less carefully disposed and brought out into perfect light and position when required, should be applied to collections of pottery, metal-work, carving, embroidery and such objects, and also to pictures as well as to collections relating to natural history. The chief reason for this is the enormous space required in order to place permanently "on exhibition" all the objects contained in our national art collections, which are continually growing. The vast size of the galleries required, if the entire collections are to be exhibited so that the public may walk in and see anything and everything in it, permanently displayed on walls or in cases—entails gigantic and ever-increasing expenditure of public funds.

But this is not the only objection to these great galleries. The multitude of objects—it may be of pictures—exhibited creates a state of mind in the visitor which prevents his enjoyment of the works of art so exhibited. He is overwhelmed by the vastness of the series offered for his examination and confused and distressed by the close setting of things which require isolation and appropriate surroundings each in its own special way, if they are to be duly appreciated. Not only this, but pictures, as well as other works of art, are, in consequence of the necessity of placing them all in the great public galleries used for the purpose, rarely placed in the most favourable conditionsof lighting, and are very often so ill-lighted as to lose all their beauty even if they are not nearly invisible. More public money would be available for the proper care and study of works of art were less spent on the land, building and up-keep necessary for huge galleries.

Back to Index Next